Attacks against helicopters highlight their vulnerability

DALLAS -- The downing of two Army helicopters in a week may signal a shift in tactics by insurgents who oppose U.S. reconstruction efforts in Iraq.

It may mean that seasoned al-Qaida warriors, who became proficient at shooting down Soviet helicopters in Afghanistan more than a decade ago, are operating in Iraq.

Or, in a war-torn country where U.S. aircraft routinely are fired upon, it simply may be a tragic twist of fate that the helicopters were shot down within days of each other.

Six soldiers were killed Friday when their UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter apparently was shot down by insurgents near Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown. And 16 soldiers were killed when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter was downed Sunday west of Baghdad.

Whatever the explanation, the incidents highlight the dangers facing the ubiquitous military helicopters that chop through the skies over Iraq. They transport troops and supplies throughout the countryside, patrol remote regions and participate in combat missions against Iraqi insurgents.

Helicopters have played an integral role in military operations since Vietnam. Their ability to land almost anywhere has enabled military commanders to engage an enemy in remote locations not easily accessible by ground vehicles, and to quickly evacuate wounded soldiers. But there also are perils associated with those capabilities.

"The basic problem with helicopters can be described very simply: They fly low and they fly slow," said Loren B. Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute. "So people who don't have very sophisticated weapons can take them out."

And in Iraq, he said, there's no shortage of weapons.

"The three most important things to understand about Iraq today is that there's half a million soldiers out of work," Thompson said. "There's thousands of surface-to-air missiles that are unaccounted for. And they've actually been attacking our aircraft every single day since the occupation began."

Witnesses reported seeing missiles streak toward the Chinook helicopter downed Sunday. Iraq's military arsenal included Russian-designed heat-seeking missiles. U.S. military officials have not stated what brought down the Black Hawk that crashed on Friday, although some reports have indicated that it was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG).

RPGs are simply aimed at a target and fired. They have no sophisticated guidance system. But they were used to shoot down U.S. helicopters during the Vietnam War, and against more modern Black Hawk helicopters in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993.

"It's not really that accurate," said Gary Wineteer, who flew in helicopters in Vietnam and serves as the president of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association's Mid-America Chapter. "You have to be fairly close to the aircraft."

Kenneth Barnard, a Vietnam veteran who spent more than 30 years flying helicopters for the Army, said RPGs were a problem in Vietnam but that the main threat was large-caliber machine guns.

In Cambodia and Laos, he said, helicopter pilots sometimes encountered radar-guided anti-aircraft fire and missiles, "and you had no defense at all."

Barnard, who teaches aviation at Kansas State University-Salina, said sensors on modern Army helicopters such as the Black Hawk warn if the aircraft are being tracked by radar or "if a missile is launched against you."

Modern helicopters also can dispense decoys designed to confuse a missile's guidance system and misdirect it. A heat-seeking missile, for example, may home in on the heat from a decoy flare.

A senior Army official said the Chinook helicopter shot down over Iraq last weekend had a last-second warning of an approaching missile and managed to launch decoy flares, but it was unclear why they didn't work.

Maneuverability, Barnard said, is a helicopter pilot's best defense against missiles that are more designed to destroy fixed-wing aircraft that don't have the quick turning capability of a helicopter.

"If you've got enough distance, you've got enough time to make an evasive maneuver and you usually can avoid getting hit," he said.

Evading an attack from a shoulder-fired missile or even an RPG, however, is more problematic at lower altitudes.

"There's not a whole lot of defense because there's no time to react," Barnard said. And RPGs, which only fly where they're aimed, don't respond to chaff and flares.

For some military experts, the real surprise this week was that more helicopters have not been brought down in the months since President Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq were over on May 1.

One soldier was reported injured when a Black Hawk was shot down in late October. And an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter was shot down in western Iraq in June, but the two-man crew was not injured.

During the Soviet-Afghan War more than a decade ago, Mujahadeen fighters used RPGs and especially shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles with devastating effect against Soviet helicopters. Military transport aircraft and even airliners landing and taking off from airports in Afghanistan also were targeted. Al-Qaida operatives who'd fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan were suspected of helping Somalis target U.S. helicopters in Mogadishu in the early 1990s.

Thompson said it is possible that al-Qaida is behind the helicopter attacks in Iraq, but unlikely.

"It's not that al-Qaida couldn't do this. It's not that they wouldn't do this," he said. "But you've got half a million former Iraqi military people with access to guns, with training, who know the countryside and many of whom don't like us. They are by far the most likely perpetrators."